


Struck Me Within My Ego

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Prompt Fills [56]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23807533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Clara encounters a stranger in a purple jacket, assumptions are made, and truths are revealed. She knows she ought to be dissuaded by the stranger's identity... and yet...
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Series: Prompt Fills [56]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/585397
Comments: 15
Kudos: 41





	Struck Me Within My Ego

**Author's Note:**

> From aprilmaclean's prompt:
> 
> _Have you considered uhhh Whittaker!Master and Clara?_

“Hello.”

The woman’s voice is, to Clara’s ears at least, honey-soft and warm with the mellowed, rounded tones of the north of England; Yorkshire is an accent she hasn’t heard in a long time and it serves, almost at once, as a glancing blow to her chest, reminding her of home and the yearning, aching nostalgia that comes with it.

Yet all thoughts of all that she’s left behind melt away as she looks up at the speaker and feels her mouth quirk into an involuntary smile; she’s blonde, her hair cropped into an asymmetric bob with an inch or so of dark roots along her parting, and her eyes are alive with mischief. Dark eyeliner is smudged around her eyes with dramatic flair, and the effect is striking; it draws Clara’s gaze and holds it, and the eye contact is so intense that Clara can hardly arrange her thoughts coherently to form a response.

“Is this seat taken?” the stranger asks, then drops into the seat opposite her without waiting for an answer, arranging herself with effortless confidence to take up the maximum space possible. She sits sideways in the chair, her legs over the arm, and the breath-taking confidence the pose exudes is intoxicating. There’s a swirling, intricate tattoo peeking from the edge of her sleeve as she leans back; flowers and concentric circles, but before Clara can notice anything further, her attention is drawn by the rest of the stranger’s outfit.

The woman is wearing, in Clara’s opinion, one of the strangest combinations of clothes she’s ever seen; a deep purple coat, cut in a way that reminds her painfully and irresistibly of the Doctor, a checked waistcoat in clashing shades of purple and orange check, matching trousers that end well above her ankles, luminous purple socks, and beneath it all, a navy-blue shirt, buttoned to the neck in an oddly-formal manner that seems to cry out for some kind of adornment – a bowtie, or a necktie, or a cravat – and yet is devoid of any such touch.

The whole outfit screams ‘bold.’

It screams ‘quirky.’

Coupled with the inability to sit in a chair correctly, it screams – and Clara’s mouth twists into a smirk at the thought – ‘decidedly not heterosexual.’

“Hello,” Clara finally manages, arching an eyebrow and dragging her gaze from the stranger’s purple-socked ankle, which is propped against the loudly-checked knee of her other leg, back up to her face. A litany of earrings catch the light as the stranger turns her head fractionally to the side, her attention captured by someone at another table, and Clara’s smirk only intensifies at the silent confirmation of her suspicions. “Who might you be?”

“I’m entirely embarrassed that you have to ask, quite frankly,” the stranger leans back, spreading her arms over the back of her seat with an east arrogance and raising her own eyebrow, a silent rebuttal to Clara’s identical expression. “But since you do, why don’t I give you some clues? Number one, the coat.”

“Very… magic circle,” Clara grins, an inkling of what the stranger is hinting at beginning to materialise in her mind. She had thought it looked familiar, after all, and she feels her hopes soar. “Let me guess… deep cover?”

“Perhaps,” the stranger says mysteriously, tipping her a wink. “Number two, the eyeliner.”

“Always the flair for the dramatic. It’s not a bad look, I’ll be honest with you. I’m impressed.”

It has to be, doesn’t it? It couldn’t possibly be anyone else; there couldn’t be anyone else in the universe with such abjectly awful taste in clothes. At least this time there’s a hint of colour in there; perhaps _too_ much, if anything; maybe after last time, lessons were learned.

“Clue three,” the stranger purrs, leaning over the table and seizing Clara by the throat, lightning-fast, before snarling: “When has he _ever_ worn purple?”

“I…” Clara claws at the hand on her neck in silent shock, and just as quickly as it had darted towards her, it is rescinded, and the stranger has gone back to smirking at her with maddening smugness, as though nothing had happened. Nobody around them seems to have noticed the action, and Clara can only blink at the woman sat opposite her in horror as she realises the depths of her mistake. “You…”

“Hello, puppy,” the stranger – no, _not_ the stranger – drawls in a sickly-sweet tone, tilting her head to the side and pouting dramatically. “Lovely to see you. How’s life going as the living undead?”

“You died,” Clara points out politely, ignoring the barb in favour of delivering one of her own. “You very much died. I went to your grave, and everything. There’s trees, and it’s damp, and you were definitely dead.”

“Oh, please,” the Time Lady rolls her eyes, but her expression lights up with malicious glee. “Death is for other people, dear. Although I am very touched about the grave… did you cry? Did you leave flowers? Did you fall dramatically to the floor and weep in agonised longing for me to come back to life? Because I heard you.”

“You murdered my boyfriend.”

“I _improved_ your _already-dead_ boyfriend.”

“You made him into a Cyberman.”

“Yes?” the Time Lady asks, quirking an eyebrow quizzically, her expression studiously, carefully baffled. “I improved him. What’s the problem?”

“Missy…”

The Time Lady sucks in a breath at the name, and Clara frowns as the she starts to shake her head emphatically. “No,” she says firmly, _tsk_ ing in the same manner Clara used to when her students had failed to hand in homework. “No, that name won’t do. It’s much too… I don’t know; much too _not-me_. You can call me ‘Mistress’, how about that?”

“Over my dead body.”

“That can certainly be arranged,” not-Missy purrs, reaching for Clara’s wine glass and taking a long sip of the contents with tangible pleasure. Clara thinks about protesting, notes the way not-Missy’s hand trails subtly to her pocket, and doesn’t. “Would you like me to try?”

“I’m alright, thank you.”

“You can call me ‘Mistress’, nicely and politely while we sit at the table like grown-ups, or I can make you kneel at my feet and say it in front of all of these people.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, dear,” not-Missy cocks her head to the side and pouts, as though considering Clara’s words intently, and she takes another sip of wine. “Do you really think I wouldn’t?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Clara shoots back, narrowing her eyes in a silent challenge. “We both know you’re quite the exhibitionist.”

Not-Missy eyebrows inch closer to her hairline, and then in one fluid movement – almost as if she’s practised for this, and Clara’s sure she has – she overturns the table, reaches for Clara’s throat again, her fingers pushing down, down, down onto a pressure point, and Clara is on her knees on the parquet flooring, a horrible high keening noise filling her ears, before she can even think about fighting back. It takes her a moment to realise that the noise is coming from her, and another moment to stop; the entire clientele of the bar are staring at her as not-Missy forces her chin upwards with her free hand, forcing Clara to meet her gaze and then smirking widely.

“ _Quite_ the exhibitionist,” the Time Lady says with tangible smugness, her fingers still pressing into Clara’s neck with agonising, laser-sharp precision. The pain is excruciating, and Clara grits her teeth, trying to ignore it and remain defiant. “Now, sweetie; with all of these people looking at us so nicely, why don’t you use my name?”

“Fuck off,” Clara manages to grate out, and not-Missy presses down harder on her pressure point, Clara’s vision bursting with stars and her body screaming in complaint. She’s acutely aware of the gaze of every other patron of the bar burning into her, and she feels her cheeks flush with the humiliation of it all.

“You look so pretty when you blush,” not-Missy coos, one finger stroking the length of Clara’s jaw, and the contrast between the pain and the pleasure of the feather-light touch is electrifying, raising goose pimples along Clara’s arms and making her shiver. “And you’d be even prettier if you used – my – name.”

“I won’t,” Clara growls, and suddenly the Time Lady’s hand is gone from her throat. She gasps with relief, before the Time Lady’s hand shoots out again, not-Missy now crouching opposite her and her eyes locked on Clara’s. This time, her hand clenches over Clara’s windpipe, and even though Clara doesn’t _technically_ need to breathe, the sensation is still uncomfortable; breathing is an echo of her past life and a habit that is so ingrained in her that she feels the loss of air as acutely as if it were still a necessary part of her survival, and she struggles to inhale with a rising sense of panic.

“Say it,” the Time Lady says softly, gently, as though inviting her to do something impossibly wonderful. “Or I can keep doing this all evening. Not that I’m not tempted by the prospect, but there’s things I’d prefer to do to you in private. After all, I can’t have everyone looking at that pretty skin of yours; I might get jealous, and when I get jealous, bad things start to happen. People start to… well, people start to find themselves dead.”

“Mistress,” Clara spits with the utmost reluctance, both aroused by and apprehensive about what the Time Lady is alluding to, and the hand is gone again, the Mistress’s face breaking into a wide, proud smile. Clara loathes herself for having been so weak-willed; loathes the Mistress’s absolute certainty that she would be complicit in her own humiliation; loathes the fact that her earlier intentions towards the tall, mysterious stranger were apparently so evident. She forces herself to fix her gaze on her own knees where they’re shaking against the hard, cold flooring, the stares of the clientele around her impossibly judgemental as they continue to stare at them both, and she curses the Mistress for ensuring she can never return here. It’s a shame, really; their wine list is unparalleled, and she’s grown rather fond of the pretty girl behind the bar.

“Now, wasn’t that easy?” the Mistress cups Clara’s cheek in her hand, her touch now infinitely gentle, and the contrast is intoxicating; pleasure and pain, two sides of the same coin, and the Mistress free to dispense both at will. “Isn’t that better?”

“Fuck off,” Clara snarls, jerking her head away, but the Mistress’s free hand lands gently on her other cheek, holding her face still with infinite tenderness and steely strength; a velvet prison, but a prison, nonetheless. There’s a warning in the touch; a reminder that she could – and would – snap Clara’s neck at any moment, if necessary. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because it’s fun,” the Mistress purrs, giving a vague little shrug before continuing in an innocent tone: “And because it’s a rather efficient form of foreplay. Not that I really needed that part, but it’s so much fun to tease you… humans do get so _desperate_.”

“How do you…”

“Oh, please,” the Mistress rolls her eyes, clicking her tongue impatiently, as though Clara’s question is endlessly, wondrously stupid. “Your pupils dilated the second you looked at me, and as soon as you thought I was _him_ , you practically-”

“Don’t,” Clara snaps, hatred rising in her chest. “Don’t…”

“I’ve still got two hearts,” the Mistress whispers, and she somehow makes the words – simple, anatomical facts – sound like the most appealing proposition Clara has ever heard. Clara loathes herself for feeling quite so tempted by the offer, and yet as she kneels here on the floor of the bar, she has to admit that there’s a certain masochistic appeal to the proposal. “Two hearts, and a whole lot of really, really human urges. Nasty urges… primal urges… and does it really matter, at the end of the day, which Time Lord you pick? You’ve never seemed like the sort of girl to discriminate, Clara Oswald, and you aren’t about to start now, are you?”

“I hate you,” Clara mumbles, her cheeks reddening. “I really, really…”

The Mistress’s lips meet hers, and Clara knows; knows this is a bad idea; knows this is dangerous; knows she’s undoubtedly a pawn in a game, and yet… she can’t quite bring herself to care. All that matters is kissing this strange, dangerous woman, and allowing herself to lose herself in the feeling of it; allowing her own desire to take over her other senses and overcome her reason.

“Yes?” the Mistress asks, nipping her lower lip before pulling back enough to smirk at her.

Clara sighs heavily, looking down at the floor as she asks: “Your TARDIS or mine?”


End file.
